“Paul asks in Romans 11:35, ‘Who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?”
The answer is no one. Nothing enriches God; nothing adds to His glory; nothing increases His happiness (Job 22:2; 35:6–7; 41:11).
God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:25). God plus the world is not more sufficient, more glorious, or more blessed than God minus the world.
Therefore, God’s external works, in their endless variety and also in their cosmic totality, are a supreme act of charity, an act of the most liberal generosity.
Who, then, benefits? The answer of course must be God’s beloved children. The heart of the blessed Trinity is to benefit us by giving Himself to us.
This is the love of the Father. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14).
The glory that the Father manifests in predestination, that the Son manifests in redemption, and that the Spirit manifests in sanctification is the glory of God’s free, boundless, generous grace (Eph. 1:3–14).
In eternity, God the Father crowns God the Son by God the Holy Spirit and, in so doing, is eternally blessed. In time, God the Father crowns God the Son by God the Holy Spirit, manifesting and communicating His eternal blessedness and, in so doing, making us eternally blessed in Him.
In the end, God’s supreme end in God’s external works and our supreme good do not stand in a competitive, contrastive relation because they are one. How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord (Ps. 144:15)!”
–Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction, ed. Graham A. Cole and Oren R. Martin, Short Studies in Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 127-128.
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